I have taken up my lodgings in the loft of the laboratory building itself and am so quite at home with chemical apparatus and preparations all around, they are congenial spirits, as Mr. Silliman remarked when he showed me the room.

Letter to a friend (25 Jun 1845) as quoted by Frank Dawson Adams, in 'Biographical Memoir of Thomas Sterry Hunt' presented to the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences (1932). Hunt was Professor Silliman Jrs student and assistant at the Scientific School of Yale University.

I once lodged in Hanover in a room whose window gave on to a narrow Street which formed a communicating link between two bigger streets. It was very pleasant to see how people's faces changed when they entered the little Street, where they thought they were less observed; how here one pissed, there another fixed her garter, one gave way to private laughter and another shook his head. Girls thought with a smile of the night before and adjusted their ribbons for conquests in the big Street ahead.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- Carl Sagan